


This is a Protest Song

by Goethicite



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Marching, Police, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-13
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 05:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goethicite/pseuds/Goethicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a photograph of another life in Natasha's desk.  It is from a protest rally.  She has nothing else to say on this matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is a Protest Song

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what else to say about this other than I just got a book on the history of protest songs and was fascinated Alexander Galich and his contemporaries. I wanted to reflect a little of that spirit into Natasha to give her a cultural grounding for how she turned her damage into strength.

There is a black and white photo somewhere in a small, Ukrainian newspaper out of Kiev that would become a worldwide sensation. It is a simple enough tableau. A woman kissing her lover. She holds a sign that reads, "Peaceful, fair elections are a human right." in Cyrillic script. It's a little lopsided in her grasp. She doesn't know there's a camera. Her lover holds up his fingers in a peace sign at the encroaching, black clad police carrying batons and riot shields. Their faces aren't clearly recognizable. He's wearing a military, camouflage cap with a peace symbol pin and musical notes drawn on it in marker. Her scarf is pulled up for warmth. It leaves only enough of their faces visible to give the distinct sense that the kiss is full of love and she is beautiful to him in such a deep way that he disregards the rest of the world in favor of her. They are lost in each other as the other protestors flee around them, still emotion in a riot of humanity.

They are young and in love in a turbulent country, fighting for their children's future in a democratic, peaceful, forward-thinking society. At least, that's how the article presents these two, unknown figures. This is a lie.

The photo is black and white. So it isn't obvious that the hair beneath the woman's scarf is blood red. With his face shadowed, bright, cold eyes are softened to something not unnerving. But that picture is truer than those that know the lie would believe.

Natasha has the negatives in a fireproof box in a bank under a false name. She bought them from the photographer long after the image became famous. She keeps a single copy of the image in her room, taped to the inside of the desk above a desk drawer. She's never told Clint that it exists. He never makes the connection between the two Ukrainian Bohemians and the fantasy he'd built for her.

It is the only relic she keeps of the six months in a shithole apartment where she fell in love for the first time with a man so broken he loves her still. Where the Black Widow joined the side of the angels for a sinner with a body count that rivaled her own, because he never told any lie she didn't ask for. There were flowers in the summer (bought the night before from a woman on the street for half the cost because she was about to throw them away), and blankets in faded rainbow colors in the winter (which he'd bought for her with the tips from the bar where they worked). The days were counted in kisses and soft, pleased sighs. It was the only place she could be a woman as she wished to be and a place they couldn't stay.

She remembers the day of the picture, their last day in Kiev, with a clarity that she isn't used to. Some days when she's in a crowd, she can hear the chanting and Clint's own yelling, fist raised against the police and government, crying out for peace. The sign hadn't been hers, but Clint had pulled her into the throng of students with a laugh. She'd never been to a protest (not without a target) and found herself swept away by the smiles and hope pressing in from around her. She'd taken the sign from a woman with two and carried it above her head, shouting along with Clint.

There had been a heart-stopping moment when the mob of humanity rounded a corner. The memory of loosing Clint in those nameless faces still makes her throat close up a little. Then another woman had taken her hand with a reassuring smile. They had marched together, waving their signs. Her name was Oxana, a mathematics student. She'd called Natasha 'beautiful Natalia' and had been so very impressed to find out her new friend was a dancer. They had looked for Clint together through the crowd. Natasha still counts Oxana among her few, dearest friends even though she still doesn't know anything about the woman.

Clint found them of course. Waiting in the lee side of a small church with a group of men in heavy, dark work pants. He'd lifted her onto his shoulders, much to the pleasure and amusement of Oxana and the people around them. His back had been hot beneath her thighs in contrast to the numbness nipping at the tips of her fingers from the cold. She hadn't ever put her legs around his neck without some level of implied threat before then.

They had walked, well he and Oxana had, for what seemed like miles or days or something between. The noise never died. Natasha had started shouting to blend in. By the time she'd walked hand-in-hand with a stranger, she'd wanted free and fair elections so badly it felt like there was fire in her belly to match the way her hair blazed in the sun.

The police had been waiting at the government building that was the goal of the protest. Their shiny, black appearance had almost shaken Natasha out of the dream Clint had drawn her into. But Oxana had pulled out a handful of flower petals, vivid indigo and gold against the dreary, gray winter streets, and thrown them over Natasha and Clint, laughing in dare at the police. Clint had let Natasha slide down so she and Oxana could help organize the students into rotating lines of boots slushing through partially melted snow and icy puddles.

The tear gas and batons had come out soon after. Clint knocked many of the canisters harmlessly away from their friends with rocks, laughing and shouting profanities at throwers. Natasha had run up to him when the police started advancing, meaning to pull him back into the crowd. He'd wrapped his arms around her, leaving her sign, still clutched in one hand, askew. The kiss had made that fire in her belly flare into an inferno. She'd pressed one gloved had against his check, pushing her tongue into his mouth, biting at his lips, then turned to the men in black walking towards them. So they could all see the red, shininess of her mouth. Then she'd shouted, almost against her will, a half chant, half song, "Can you take the square? You must take the square." It was the only protest song she knew at the time, and her former handlers would have slit her throat for even thinking the words.

Other protestors picked up more modern songs to echo her. They sang even as the police drove them away. Clint had held her hand as they ran. She'd dropped her sign to clutch at Oxana, but the other woman was ripped away by the crowd. Natasha never saw her again. Still it was enough that, when they went back to those creaky, cold rooms, Natasha had told Clint to call SHIELD. The Black Widow wanted in.

Natasha keeps the picture close to remind her of the only false memories that are her own, of a mediocre ballerina and her musician lover and their march through the street for their vote. She is the Black Widow, a remorseless killer with a doll's face. It is a life she chose for herself, and she will not regret it no matter how her ledger drips. But for six months, she had the slow burn of high summer to the soul-deep cold of late January. She was Natalia the dancer, for one day Natalia the rebel, and had flowers in the morning with her lover's smile, and her voice hadn't shaken when she screamed a song that would have meant death in her old life with a hundred voices echoing her words.


End file.
